Penny Auction Sites in the Philippines

Bidding fee auction sites or more popularly known as penny auction sites have existed in other countries for a number of years now.

In the Philippines, a handful of them started a few years ago but all of them eventually closed down.

But with social media marketing and the growing number of Pinoys who are spending and shopping online, a new list of penny auction sites have been enjoying good success in recent months.

What is a penny auction site?

It’s a website that puts items up for bid and gives users the chance to bid on the item with very small price increments, usually 1 centavo (thus a penny auction).

The auction closes at a certain time but extends a few seconds if someone bids on the item. The bidding continues until no more bids are placed and the timer runs out.

At this point, the winning individual will then have to pay the final bid price and eventually, gets the item.

Locally, I’ve seen individuals pay only P100.91 for a brand new iPhone 4 or only P146.16 for a brand new iPad 2 among hundreds of other desirable items.

Yes, you’ve read it right, they paid less than P150.00 for items worth around P29,000.00

How do penny auction sites make money if people are paying for those expensive items at very little cost?

Now here’s how it gets interesting. Before an individual can bid on an item, he or she must first buy what is commonly referred to as a bid pack.

There are several bid packs you can choose from, one of them for example, is a P500 bid pack that gives you 50 bid points.

Your bid points decrease by 1 every time you place a bid. If you don’t have bid points left, then you can no longer bid on an item.

So let’s say that you bought the P500 bid pack above and you now have 50 bid points. If for example there’s an LCD TV up for auction at a current price of P0.15 – if you place a bid on that item, then the price will go up to P0.16, you will become the highest bidder, and then you will be left with 49 bid points.

Thus, each time you bid, you’re actually spending P10.00 – and conversely, the penny auction site owners are earning P10.00 – that is because the bid points that you used to bid on the item will NOT be returned (whether you win or lose the auction).

So going back to the iPhone 4 above which was “sold” for only P100.91 – if we assume that each bid point that was used costs P10.00. Then the website actually earned a gross income of P100,910.00 (10,091 bids multiplied by P10.00).

List of Penny Auction Sites in the Philippines

These are the list of active and inactive Philippine Penny Auction Sites

Bid Mania: www.bidmania.ph

Bidgatin: www.bidgatin.com

Happy2Bid: happy2bid.com

Bidang Bidder: bidangbidder.com

BidPH: bidph.com

Bid Pilipinas: bidpilipinas.com

Bilibid: www.bilibid.com

Panalo PH: www.panalo.ph

Pera Bid: perabid.com

Pinoy Bidders: www.pinoybidders.com

Pinoy Tiange: ibid.pinoytiange.com

PNoyBid: pnoybid.com

Warning: There are many penny auction scam sites out there. So be careful when joining one. Make sure that you personally know someone who has actually won an item there and the site is owned by a reputable company.

Also, keep in mind that some penny auction sites could start as a legal entity, but eventually end up as a scam. So always take everything in stride and be careful always.

AND AN EVEN MORE IMPORTANT WARNING

At first impression, penny auction sites seem to be a good way to save money on items that you want or need to buy. But it is not!

Penny auction sites fall under the category of entertainment shopping. If you want to save money through a good bargain deal, then don’t go to a penny auction site.

For entertainment – much like how you spend money inside the arcade to play those games, hoping that you’ll win a prize.

In conclusion, let me say that these websites can be quite entertaining… but it can also be extremely addicting (and frustrating). So be sure to exercise discipline when playing – never bid over your limit, practice patience and most of all, just have fun.

31 Responses to “Penny Auction Sites in the Philippines”

Honestly, I didn’t know how penny stocks really operated. At least up until now. You’re post really made me curious especially when I visited Pesobid. I was entertained, but considering that the auction for a certain item would mean losing a lot of bid points which is 10 Php each, I would definitely be losing more money than saving ‘em. So I say No! to penny stocks.

Hi Fitz, almost year ago, a friend of a friend gave me what looked liked a prepaid card with “free” bid credits for a website (I totally forgot the name) where people can bid for gadgets online, just like how you described it above.

It did not appeal to me and I thought to myself “why would I have to spend (when my bid credits on the “free” card got used up and “reloaded”) to bid on something when there is no assurance I would win on my bid…”, it sounded like gambling to me… and the “free” prepaid card seems to be a ploy to get people hooked.

It also reminded me of those biddings for gadgets through text messages where the lowest unique bid wins.

Thanks a lot Fitz for sharing this, I suppose a lot of people can get addicted to such penny auction sites and your post certainly helps people become aware that instead of saving, they just might end up being frustrated. Like what you said, this can be fun but only up to a certain extent.

I tried to register today when i read this, and guys, this is not a joke, i got so lucky with an IPAD 2!!! as in kanina lang ako nanalo! thanks again Fitz for directing me to the site. I’ve always been intrigued by them but didn’t think there were philippine sites already.

Hi Fritz,
Joe d Mango is right. I think there is a conspiracy between some of the veteran bidders and the operators of Bilibid. Kung veteran bidder ka, are you willing to bid more than 500 for a 125 bid pack or bid more than 400 for a 300 pesos gift certificate???

Their modus operandi is to raise the number of bids para mas mataas ang kita ni Bilibid. Kaya if you notice, the winners of the GC’s and bid packs are the veterans, while the winners of the more expensive items are new bidders… May nag-confirm sa amin thats why I dnt bid anymore with BILIBID.

Pisobid is way way better than Bilibid. They give chances for others to win, winning in this auction depends on your diskarte….. Kaya nga some veteran bidders were banned and were not allowed to participate, may conspiracy daw kasi among the veteran bidders…

Hello everyone! I am the owner of PinoyBidShot.com and I saw the link of the site here. I am currently looking for a partner of this business (co-owner) since it was very very hard to start and market it in our country. I was the one who built the site including all the technical side. This business has very big potential in our country since there are very few who offers it and operating legitimately. In technical side, everything are settled-in already but I need someone to market it. PinoyBidShot.com auctions real items and I do not use bot/dummy account in the site as what paul recardo mentioned above. If you’re interested and want to talk about my offer, please contact me at PinoyBidShot.com through the contact page and will discuss the details and we could have an in-person meeting. Thank you everyone and I am hoping someone from here will be interested with this offer.

We appreciate your comments above and we welcome your opinion about the penny auction sites who use auto bidders. For the info of everyone, happy2bid.com uses auto bidders as Bid Assistant tool for users. It is a free tool available to all users who wish to automate their bidding experience so that they will not stay in the wee hours of the night to win their favorite gadget. The Bid Assistant can bid on your behalf even though you are not logged-in. Its a convenience tool for users who don’t want to stay in front of the computer to participate in our auction. Happy2bid.com strongly adheres to fairness and transparency and we don’t use “system” bots or employ shill bidding. We publish our winners in our Facebook page and soon every major won auction will show the winner’s picture.

If anybody here has doubts on happy2bid.com, please feel free to email support@happy2bid.com and I will make sure we will resolve it.

I tried for the first tym the BIDGATIN n i won ipad2 n they told me to pay 500 so that i can have my product n when i called them they said na they are going to close the auction siteN itold them that i will report u for being a scam n they just reply report it.Here is the num 09202722841

I think penny auction have a bad rep considering how many people win compared to those who don’t understand how to play it and then give the title of it being a scam. The one thing people don’t get is that truly these sites make there money off the bid packs sold not so much on the items. In fact in some cases they lose money rather then profit on most items. The gamble goes both ways. I have won and saved thousands of pesos off penny auctions , it’s a great way to spend 2 k a month and convert it to 8k-10k worth of GC and/or products, but knowing which ones to play and how to play them all depends on research and not just diving in using all your bids quickly leading to frustration. If your new I would suggest starting small, bid on items that none of the high end bidders bid on so you have a better chance of bidding, or bid smart by waiting till the end of the auction timer ans wait and time when the last bids will be made. It takes time but winning is highly possible to those who know and learn how to play.

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